Barnum Brook on the Boreal Life Trail

While walking the long and beautiful Boreal Life trail at the Paul Smiths College’s Visitor Interpretive Center in the Adirondacks, you eventually arrive at the wooden boardwalk along the water. The water here is the Barnum Brook. This is a photograph of the Barnum Brook at the end of the boardwalk with lots of Black Spruce and Tamarack trees. Most of these trees are severely stunted and small from the roots trying to grow in the nutrient poor and very acid water and sphagnum moss. If you dare to leave the trail and try to step out onto the mossy “ground” your foot and leg will go entirely through the moss layer into the water below.